


Dial M (for death at your door)

by JaqofSpades



Series: Dial M for Murder [1]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mafiaverse, TSC prompt 9, no blackout au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 11:01:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4874251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That was the moment they stopped being Marines, and snatched up the mantle Death had been holding for them ever since they first fell into her clutches.  That was when he turned them both into killers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dial M (for death at your door)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Steph_Schell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steph_Schell/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Makes me Want to Wrap You in my Arms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2056854) by [Steph_Schell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steph_Schell/pseuds/Steph_Schell). 



> Written for Revolution: The Second Coming, a fanworks challenge hosted by [The Orgy Armada](theorgyarmada.tumblr.com). Prompt 9: Dial M for Murder, for Bass/Miles. This story is set in Steph_Schell’s [Mafia alternaverse](http://archiveofourown.org/series/130269), as is the Charlie/Connor fill, Dial M (for woe evermore.)

If he thinks back, it probably started in Iraq.

They had always been close – me and you, brother, just me and you – but living cheek by jowl in a warzone forged something those boys in Jasper could have never imagined.  They couldn’t rest without the other nearby, couldn’t eat unless they were both being fed, couldn’t come without the stroke of a familiar hand. Given the opportunity, they would share women, but there was only ever one real rival for each other’s affections.  Their other lover, death.

She swatted at them, swiped at them, loomed so close they couldn’t see anything, smell anything, imagine her as anything but a last, glorious fuck, the quickest way to escape the hellhole of hot sand tinted pink by the blood they had spilt.  They talked about it, played with it, used it to drive themselves into a place where there was nothing but raw, hot desire: for death, for killing, for each other.

They weren’t like that, before.

Bass remembers being a kid, running amok in the woods around Jasper, his sides aching from laughing so hard that he could barely manage to hold on to the guns they’d carved from the low-hanging willow tree.  It had been their den, too, when they played at being wolves, and their haven when some adult came looking to drag them back to the world of homework and chores and pesky little sisters.

He thought of that place often during their tours.  He would conjure up the smell of the earth and the stink of Miles beside him, sweaty from the day, transporting himself back to home, and safe.  It was a comforting memory to crawl into when the day had been full of mortars, or the operation had been a clusterfuck, or they scared themselves with the violence of their passion for each other.

Which was a lot. He’s not sure when they became so desperate for their white hot bliss that they gotten downright stupid about it.  Were they so in love with death that the more dangerous, the more stupid it was, the harder they got off? They would push each other up against walls during midnight rotations; fuck in alleyways in a country where their particular sin was punishable by death; compete to see who could make the other yell loudest in a barracks full of soldiers still bound by “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“Take me, you fucker,” Miles screamed into the Fallujah night, and Bass had known it for the dare it was.  He wrestled him to the ground, hands busy and mouth already closing on his brother’s cock by the time the snipers calculated the shot.  The ping of bullets overhead slowly became the soundtrack to their favourite sort of fuck, all spit and adrenaline and blood and the sudden, crystalline absence of fear.

Sometimes Bass mourned for the boys they used to be.  Not for long, though.  Not when he got to taste Miles thick and ropy on his tongue, or feel the burn in his ass that kept him smirking for days after a clandestine session.  They had food in their bellies and boots on their feet and the sort of job security that came from being the most valued members of their unit.

Miles used to complain he worried too much – “Jesus, Bass, I could bend you over in front of the whole damn platoon and they’d still try to give us a medal” – and that it wasn’t changing them, the things they did.

“It’s not like we enjoy killing people.  We just like being good at it,” he shrugged, and yeah, Bass could see that was true.

And he was right about one thing.  They were good at it.

So good, they’d never leave the Corps, they swore.  Nothing else could ever fit them so well.

They’d been wrong.

*

His parents and sisters were buried on a glorious September day, the bright blue sky clashing with the darker blue of all the police uniforms.  Dad had been a career police officer, and his old friends from the Chicago PD had turned out in force.  Familiar faces, mostly, even if he didn’t know all of the names, so the civilian in the sharp, black suit had stood out. So had the delicate beauty at his side, pale face drawn, huge green eyes drenched with tears.

No one else was looking at the girl, though.  Every cop in the place had their eyes trained on her companion, their fury and distrust tangible.  Something, his gut told him, was very wrong. And when he turned to ask Miles what he thought, his brother’s scowl answered before he had to ask.  Afterwards, they track down his father’s old partner to find out who the two strangers were.

Riley refused to answer at first, but then gave way with a groan.  “Her name is Emma Bennett.  Her dad was a cop, too.  Obviously wanted to pay her respects.”

“Who’s the guy?”

It was Riley’s grimace of fear that clued him in.  Somewhere, a bell was tolling, and for the rest of his life he will wonder whether it was just his mind playing tricks, or if he really had been presented with two paths then, and asked to decide.

“His name is Tony Salvatore.  He’s mixed up with some people out of Chicago that your Dad got on the wrong side of.”

“Did they kill him?  Did they do this on purpose?”

Riley didn’t answer, but his eyes were too tired and sad to hide the truth.

When the house was finally quiet, Bass closed himself in his father’s study and pulled up Google on the ancient desktop his father barely knew how to use.   Salvatore, the news reports told him, was in and out of the courts for a grab bag of offences, but nothing had ever seemed to stick.   The accusations are couched in careful, careful language, but the thing the reporters can’t say is there nonetheless: he’s a mobster.  A hitman working for the most dangerous Don in the country.

The door swung open behind him and Bass clicked out quickly.  He had told himself he didn’t know what he was going to do with the information, but looking back, the simple fact that he had tried to keep Miles out of it was prophetic enough.

“So who was he?” Miles had said, leaning back against the door, whiskey bottle swinging loosely between his fingers.  

“Who?  Oh, the guy?  Nah, I was seeing if I could find out more about that chick.  Fucking hot,” Bass had dodged.  

Miles lifted a sceptical eyebrow. “Yeah.  If by hot you mean sad and terrified.  Who the fuck is he, Bass?”

Bass tried to hold out, but Miles Matheson always had a knack for getting to the truth.  He tortured the information out of him one merciless pass of his tongue at a time.

“This is my fight,” Bass gasped, and Miles punished him by letting his teeth scrape along the length of Bass’ cock before disengaging with last, long suck.

“Our fight,” he corrected calmly as he straightened up, then spun Bass around to shove him face down onto the desk.  His hands yanked viciously at Bass’ belt before shoving trousers and boxers down towards his knees.  Bass found himself hobbled, helpless, arms hooked tight behind his back and his entire body immobilised in way that made him want to cry with gratitude.

All there was left to do was to take it, to murmur his thanks while Miles anointed him with spit and precome, and to groan through the pinch and pressure until his body yielded to the dizzying plunge of cock. He was still grieving, still shellshocked, but the pleasure knotted tight in his balls the way it always did, sparked electric with every snap of his lover’s hips, coiled in his chest and behind his eyes until there was nothing but that imminence, that last, long drop …

“You and me, brother,” Miles hissed into his ear as their bodies begin to shudder.  “You and me,” and the rawness of it, the ferocity, was what catapulted Bass over the edge, his poor, bereft cock jerking helplessly underneath him as Miles pounded him into the desk.

Later, he’ll think he should have stuck to his guns.  What a pussy Miles made of him that day, sucking and fucking him into changing the entire course of their lives.  Because that night, after getting drunk but before they got high, they planned the hit.

It was a road and a half from there to here, sure, one that had more than a few twists, but that was basically it, Bass reckons.  That was the moment they stopped being Marines, and snatched up the mantle Death had been holding for them ever since they first fell into her clutches.

That was when he turned them both into killers.

They stalk Tony Salvatore for three weeks, learning his haunts, admiring his mistresses, hearts bleeding for the bruises on the face of his gorgeous young wife.  They schedule the hit for a day she is supposed to be on the other side of the country, and don’t hear her key in the door.

“I guess we all reap what we sow,” she said calmly, and her eyes met his over her husband’s corpse.  “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Even a pretty witness will land you in jail, Miles harangued, but Bass wouldn’t budge.  They don’t hurt Emma.  Ever. And just like that, she becomes his to protect.  Love isn’t far behind.

“We can’t,” she had cried, and “you have to go.  They’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth.”

“Bring it on,” Miles had snarled.  “Time they learnt what real soldiers can do.”

Fourteen men are dead before the Don sues for peace.  The offer is crude but effective: join him, and they get to live.  Emma gets to live.  So does his child,  already growing in her belly.

“Works for me,” Miles had shrugged, and they offered their guns to the Don as one, shoulders brushing as they bowed before him, brothers still.

It wasn’t all that different to being in the Marines, in the end.  They hunted, they killed.  They were very, very good at it.  Better clothes, Miles liked to point out, and side by side lakeside mansions sure beat life in barracks.   

(Sometimes, their eyes met, and he remembered how they had made that life bearable.  Fucking in the sand.  Jerking into each other’s palms as they lay on those narrow cots.  Hands down each other’s pants in the shadow of a stalled jeep.  Then Emma’s sweet voice would curl into his consciousness, or little Connor would tug at his trousers, and it was family that brought him back.)

He’s faithful to Emma, always, and for the first time in his life he wasn’t willing to share.  Miles only asked once, more in the spirit of enquiry than out of a real desire to fuck her, and Bass had laid him out in two punches.  Later, over a rare single malt Bass had bought an entire distillery to get his hands on, he had hemmed and hawed his way to an apology, and an admission: he had never told Emma about just how close he and Miles were.  One day, he hopes he’ll be able to, but he’s not sure she could understand.

“Not sure we ever understood us, either,” Miles pointed out, and Bass had to salute him with the glass, because ain’t that the truth.

He never did tell her, Bass mourns.  A part of him needed her to know, wanted her to understand, but life caught up with them first. After the girls were born, Emma couldn’t bear to stay any longer.  Bass couldn’t stand the politics, and even as Miles begged him not to do it, they started to make plans to get out.

He’d forgotten all about his most jealous spouse, Death.

*

He buries them in Jasper, four more coffins on the hill near the dead family he was born into. Emma, her red hair stained black with blood. His twin girls. And an extra coffin, for his son, thankfully empty. The world doesn’t need to know Connor survived the Don’s punishment for trying to leave.)

The Don, they agreed, had to die.  And to get to the Don, they would have to take out his lieutenants, creating a power vacuum it would be irresponsible not to fill.  They argue over who it has to be, and in the end flip a coin.  The Monroe Family it would be.

There were days when Miles literally had to hold him up, and weeks when he shut himself away, lest his trigger finger decide to blow every last one of them away.  But they had a traitor to ferret out, whoever it was that had told the Don they were planning to leave.

Those were the years when vengeance met death, and they waltzed together in his head, the only things keeping him sane.   

She hid her tracks so well, that it takes them nearly three years to discover the source of the leak.  

Rachel Matheson had been orbiting the Family ever since he and Miles had first pledged their fealty … she’d seen their houses, their lives, and put two and two together quicker than you could say “future Mob wife.”   Miles’ brother, Ben, was a scientist, some speciality so obscure that Bass had never been able to wrap his head around it, but his sharp, beautiful wife was a more down-to-earth type.  A weapons developer, conveniently enough, and a woman with a mind so sharp and twisty that the Don had been pleased to put out the welcome mat.

The fact that she was willing to suck his cock probably hadn’t hurt her position either.

Miles had been horrified at first, but then pragmatic.  If they’d come in of their own accord, they couldn’t be used against him.  He wouldn’t have to cut himself off completely just to protect them.

Neither of them had ever imagined that it would be Rachel and Ben they needed to protect themselves from, but the evidence was undeniable.  Confronted, Ben had blustered about how wrong it all was, how Miles had spat on their family legacy and corrupted it.  Rachel had been more upfront, and Bass discovers something he should have been paying more attention to all along.  Miles had been fucking his brother’s wife, and women in love do strange and desperate things.

She did it for Miles, Rachel protested.  He’d never give up on  Bass, and he and Emma leaving spelt disaster for them all.

They let her live.  She’s Family, after all.  But he owns them, now, Rachel’s useful research and Ben’s pie-in-the-sky bullshit and anything he damn well wants from them. Their first born child, if that’s what it takes.

She’s a pretty thing, Charlie.  A handful of years younger than Connor, more like Miles than her own father. He watches her grow up, and the prospect of formally uniting the Monroes and the Mathesons tickling him the whole time.  Maybe the kids won’t understand, but he will.  Miles will.

He bides his time, though, giving them a chance to grow up, and get past all their petty little hates.  He hopes that one day she’ll understand  that her father had left him no choice.  The irony of it isn’t lost on him – this whole thing started when a mob boss targeted his father – and something about it almost feels like fate.  Maybe she’ll make good on those death threats she likes to spit and send him to wherever it is monsters wedded to death get to go.

It hurts less, with time.  Killing got easier when you no longer had to pull the trigger and wash the brains out of your hair, but one thing that never changed was that they were still good at it.  The best, in fact.

Or maybe, Bass considered as he watched Charlotte Matheson stalk down the aisle to marry his son, the best was yet to come.

*

Bass throws back his first whiskey of the evening standing in front of the huge window in his office, looking out over the city he rules.  He can feel Miles standing behind him, a full pace away but still a wall of heat.  Once, he would have closed the gap between them, that long, wiry body the only thing able to protect him from the creeping, endless cold, but there’s too much between them now:  wives, girlfriends, children. Deaths.

“What’s eating you?”

He holds his breath, sure that Miles will have heard by now.  No matter how many death threats Charlie spits his way, he loves the girl like a daughter.

“I had Charlie brought in today.  Scanlon accused her of planning to turn State’s Evidence.”

The air chills another half dozen degrees.

“Was she?”

“Connor tells me no.  And Scanlan didn’t have a scrap of evidence to prove otherwise, so I let her go.”

“Do you think she did it?”

He leans his forehead against the glass, and lets it cool his overheated skin.  If only his suspicions were as easy to banish as the headache.

“I have no idea.  All it know is that it’s been too goddamn quiet over at casa de young love, and I don’t trust those kids to have figured out what’s good for them yet.”

Miles moves up beside him, close enough that Bass can see the worry pulling at the corner of his mouth.  “She’s going to try and kill us, one day.  For Ben.”

“I know.  I can sympathise.  Might even wish her good luck.”

Miles hangs his head a little, then returns his black gaze to the panorama spread out below them.  “If they come after me, I want you to swear.  No reprisals, Bass.  Whatever happens.”

His chest tightens and Bass wonders for a moment if the shock has stopped his heart. Not the request, because the man is a fool for that girl and always has been.  But at the thought that someone might actually succeed in killing his right hand man, his lifelong friend, his once-and-never-not-quite lover. And not because they were lucky, or skilled or clever, but because Miles loved them so much he refused to fight.

“You’ll just let them off you?”

“Man’s gotta die sometime.  And I’d rather it be them.  Or you.”

It hits him like a hammer blow.

“Me?  You think _I_ could kill you?”

“I don’t know, Bass,” Miles groans. “I’ll admit it’s crossed my mind more than once.  Rachel must demand my head on a fucking nightly basis.  And Nora says --.”

Bass snarls, the jealousy eating at him like nothing else can.  He likes Nora, he does.  She’s a smart cookie and a loyal soldier.  He just hates the fact that Miles loves her, and has something real with her.

It’s hard to be happy for Miles and Nora when he is tied to the Black Widow herself.

Marrying Rachel, he accepts now, was a particularly masochistic sort of ritual self-flagellation.  He’d loved Ben, in a remote older brother kind of way, and it was the hardest kill he had ever had to order. And when the topic of how to best protect the Family had arisen, he and Miles had decided it was to snare their biggest vulnerability so deep in their web she’d never be able to fight her way free.  There would be no immunity for Rachel Matheson-Monroe, so heavily implicated in her first husband’s death, her name all over the books of the dirtiest businesses he ran.

Rachel had been propositioning him for years, ever since she’d realised Miles wasn’t about to step up and claim her himself.  They’d had more than a few desultory fucks when Bass got sick of turning her down, but if she had harboured any illusions as to why Bass wanted to marry her, he and Miles had taken steps to cure her of them on the wedding night.  They’d tied her to a chair, rage and humiliation colouring her cheeks, and had taken turns to fuck each other over and over again as his new bride watched, untouched.

He knows Connor and Charlie are hoping he’ll get another child on the woman, but that would require a miracle.  They’ve consummated the marriage – Miles had declared himself a witness and fucked her himself for good measure – but since then, Bass has built the fiction that he keeps a mistress.  No one other than Miles needs to know that Duncan actually visits their suite to service Rachel, their antics sometimes titillating but not enough to tempt him to join in.

The truth is, he is largely celibate these days, his flagging libido unable to cope with the stress he has to endure.  That, or the sad reality that he doesn’t want to fuck anyone other than Miles, and Miles is no longer available to him that way.

“Are you happy?”

He blurts the words before the sensible part of his brain can summon them back, cringing internally as he remembers they’d just been talking about the fact that Miles actually believes Bass could allow him to be killed.

“What?”

“I couldn’t, Miles.  All I’ve ever wanted – right from the start – was for you to be happy.  Never even wanted to get you mixed up in all this.”

And fuck, he shouldn’t be thinking about that, how they’d started down this road in the first place.  Because his cock is twitching, and Miles has always had an unerring antenna for his arousal and he’s not sure he can take another rejection tonight.

(Whether or not the girl was innocent, the outcome was the same.  Connor had chosen Charlie.)

“Not like I gave you a choice,” his brother growls. “You and me, remember.”

Except, Bass thinks childishly, it became you and me and Emma and Connor and Nora and Rachel and Ben and Charlie, and fuck didn’t things get messed up then.

But rehashing the past won’t help him rule this nightmare coalition of allies and enemies, friends and lovers, every last one of which he wants to keep alive in spite of their best efforts to attract his ire. The kids though - when will they realise he’s doing it all for them? He loves them - Connor eternally, and Charlie for her own sake, as well as for Miles - and never have there been two people more qualified to rule this discount empire.

They could be happy, together, his family.  If only they’d stop trying to kill each other, this family could be _magnificent_.  It’s all he’s ever wanted.

Death cackles somewhere out in the night as Miles sidles closer, the brush of their shoulders all it takes to fire the familiar licks of heat throughout his body. The power in his brother’s biceps is still evident after all these years in a suit, his whiskey-sweet breath intoxicating, and Bass throws back the fine single malt as if it was ordinary rot-gut, his every sense focused on the man beside him.

Who takes the glass from him, and sets it on the console table an arm’s length away, one big hand already tangled in the curls at the nape of his neck.

“Miles?” Bass croaks, unable to bear it if this is some sort of underhand attack, or even comfort between friends.

“Thank you, Bass.  For Charlie, today.  You probably didn’t do it for me, but thank you anyway.”

It doesn’t occur to him not to be honest.

“For you, for Connor … for Charlie too,” he sighs.  “Maybe even for me.”

“Maybe,” Miles echoes, and brings their lips together, softer than they’ve ever kissed. There’s nothing hunting them in this room, no danger to ramp up their desire.  Just gratitude, and forty years of friendship, and those few precious spans of time when they allowed themselves to be everything to each other.

The kiss spins out of control anyway.

Bass has one hand wrapped around Miles’ cock by the the time his brain catches up with what they’re doing, slamming each other up against the glass as they lick and bite and grope and thrash against each other.  He was perfectly happy not thinking, thank you very much, but the alarm bells are already jangling and _fuck_ his suspicious mind.

“What about Nora?” he pants, and Miles practically whines into his ear.

“Can we talk about this later?”

Bass raises an eyebrow - _it’s your relationship, dude_ \- and Miles heaves a put-upon sigh.  “Fine.  I asked Nora to marry me.  She said she never really got the feeling I was free to do that and it wasn’t because of all the capo mi capo bullshit.  If I had feelings for someone else I needed to sort them out.”

Miles ducked his head to slide his tongue along the line of Bass’ jaw.  “Course, she thought it was Rachel.  Didn’t like it much when I laughed in her face, so I had to ‘fess up.  You, Bass.  It’s always been you.”

“So you and Nora …”

“Kinda in love with her too.  She says we can make it work.  The three of us.”

The curl of anticipation in his belly becomes almost too much to handle.  “Wait - like …”

“Not like that, you horny bastard. Though, maybe - totally like that?  God, I hope so,” Miles groans, licking his lips at the thought, then slamming their bodies together once more to mount a fresh attack on Bass' lips.

Bass slumps back against the glass and opens his mouth to the assault, happy to be dominated.  Pretty fucking overjoyed, in fact.  Miles is the only person this would ever occur to, he thinks deliriously, not to mention the only person he would ever allow to do this.  So he’s gonna moan and writhe like a bitch in heat and get on his knees and beg Miles to shoot all over his face, just for the privilege of being coated in his cum.

He knows exactly what to do with it too, slicking himself up and fingering himself open so frantically that when the overendowed motherfucker rams home, barely two seconds elapse before Bass spurts all over the window.  They shake with laughter as long, jagged gouts of cum decorate the glass, then Miles quiets at the approach of his own orgasm, harnessing all of his energy into a furious, hard fuck that ends in howl of unbridled pleasure.

Bass is lightheaded by the time they collapse, exhausted, into the dark leather sofa facing out into the night, Miles sprawling its full length, Bass cradled in his arms.  Something flashes in the corner of his eye, but he ignores it, too sated and happy to care.  

The red light they hadn’t deigned to notice roams their bodies as if looking for a place to rest.

It swings away as Bass leans up for a kiss, a long, wet benediction.  When their mouths part, the red dot wobbles its way back towards his heart, then wavers for a few seconds before it suddenly jerks upwards, away.

Then it blinks out.

Death isn’t ready to bring home her bridegrooms just yet.

_fin_


End file.
